But that just makes things worse. I grew up in the '80s, and for my whole life I've been told by climate scientist that we are 5/10/15/20... years away from one particular climate catastrophe or another. The field has been heavily promoting doomsday predictions for even longer than I've been alive. At first to get people to take them seriously, and since then to scare them into action. However, regardless of any good the scientists have accomplished, any climate skeptic today can say "climate scientists are full of shit" and point to literally decades of climate scientists being full of shit. The noble lies have done irreversible damage to the credibility of the field amongst large portions of the population.
I am not commenting on the actual scientific merit of the field, I am only commenting on how the science is communicated to the public, and how that has impacted it's credibility amongst certain (rather large) groups of people.
Predictions of climate catastrophe have been heavily promoted with the public for decades, and typically in a way that either implies or explicitly states a very high level of confidence. Anybody who's lived long enough will have seen multiple predictions of this nature fail to materialize.
It's pretty clear to me at least that the rationale behind this style of science communication is that it will scare people, which will motivate them to take action, which will result in better outcomes. So these misrepresentations (or lies depending on how you look at things) are entirely justified by the desired ends that the people who propagate them hope to achieve. However, one of the other outcomes they achieve is that some people notice this and come to the conclusion that the field simply lacks credibility and can be safely ignored, or even that public derision of the field is justified. Such people can easily point to the historical failures of the field to justify their position.
A lot of people will say that the people who hold these views are simply stupid, and that their views are incredibly harmful. While that might be true, it doesn't mitigate any of the harm that has been caused by the (what I would see as) highly irresponsible communication strategy employed by many of the fields scientists and advocates.
AC answered your question well, I'll just add the old story about the boy who cried "Wolf!" Eventually the wolf did come, but the boy's deception prevented any useful response.
I don't believe that's what the parent post meant. The state of the art climate modelling predictions output confidence intervals.
If you quote the low end of the confidence interval, and claim that climate change is a manageable inconvenience, you'll be (justifiably) called out by climate scientists.
If you quote the high end of the confidence interval, and elicit a picture of catastrophic consequences, mass migrations, or even runaway greenhouse effects, the climate scientists are suspiciously aloof. Even if you add zealous insistence that not a single country in the world will benefit from the warming; and that we're hurtling towards becoming the next Venus.
If you quote the high end of the confidence interval [..] the climate scientists are suspiciously aloof.
I'm not sure I agree with that perception, but even if it were, I don't find that suspicious. It may be that climate scientists are already aware that the current policies are not doing enough to avert the scenario's at the middle end of the confidence interval, so they know the high-end effects are becoming more likely each year.
zealous insistence that not a single country in the world will benefit from the warming
By all means, name a country that's completely self-sufficient for its current development level and is in a climate that can tolerate a 10%-deviation in any direction, and I'm sure many people will be able to suggest scenario's how that country will be negatively affected by the volatility of international markets or relations that are projected to occur in the second half of this century.